


Ronon & Rodney's Most Excellent Adventure

by breea1 (kipplemine)



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Angst and Humor, Back to Earth, Complete, First Kiss, M/M, Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-13
Updated: 2013-01-13
Packaged: 2017-11-25 09:03:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/637268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kipplemine/pseuds/breea1
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Re-post of a fic that I think was originally won in an auction but I can't remember exactly. It was also apparently never titled back then so I've made one up on the hoof now. Takes place after the finale when the city is still on Earth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ronon & Rodney's Most Excellent Adventure

“Hi.” Ronon turned from scowling out the window in his room on Atlantis and looked towards the source of the voice that had just spoken, surprised that he had been taken so completely unaware – he was doubly so when he saw who had managed to sneak up on him. Rodney McKay grimaced uncomfortably and waved one hand. “You busy?” 

Ronon scowled harder and forced himself not to snarl at the other man like a wounded beast. It wasn’t Rodney’s fault that he was still basically confined to bed two weeks into their sojourn on Earth – even if he had at least managed to make the progress of getting out of the infirmary and into his own quarters – and the enforced rest was slowly driving him out of his mind. “It look like it?”

Okay, so maybe there was a _little_ snarling.

Rodney looked a little put off by the angry tone of voice and then squinted at Ronon and decided that he was in with a good chance of making a break for it uninjured if his teammate decided to go completely feral on him – possibly the only time in their acquaintance where he could say with certainty that he had the physical advantage. “I’m bored.” 

Ronon looked pointedly down at his bandaged and decidedly still fragile self and then back up at Rodney. “I’ll get right on that.”

Rolling his eyes Rodney came closer and tossed a box of candy at Ronon without care for his many injuries and then threw himself down on a nearby chair with a heavy sigh. “Sheppard’s off doing very important military things with Woolsey and Landry and Teyla is busy sucking up to the IOA and being diplomatic. Jennifer’s practically welded to that doe eyed SGC doctor’s side swapping miraculous alien healing technology stories. All my scientists are skipping around Earth being very smug to their respective governments about all the wondrous discoveries that they’ve made and the SGC scientists make me want to break out in hives.” He looked at Ronon expectantly. “Which leaves you, heaven help us both.” Narrowed eyes skipped up and down Ronon’s large frame held carefully in his own chair and then settled with satisfaction on his face. “You look like you could still use a weapon if you had to.”

Ronon looked affronted. He could always handle a weapon.

Bouncing to his feet Rodney clapped his hands together and beamed brightly at Ronon. “Well, come on, the city awaits!”

“Don’t know whether you’ve noticed, McKay, but I’m not exactly in a condition to go anywhere.” Ronon glared blackly at the other man, spitting, “Keller barely even signed off on me leaving the infirmary. Don’t think she’s gonna let me go roaming the city no matter how bored you are.”

Rodney looked at him blankly and then sighed with impatience, “Well, we’re not going to tell her, obviously!” He grinned like a mischievous little boy when Ronon perked up and started looking interested. “And I never said which city was awaiting did I?”

~*~*~*

“Right,” puffed Rodney fifty minutes later. “The next time we decided to play hooky and one of us still can’t walk more than a hundred yards without feeling dizzy we get an electric wheelchair! God, I think you actually weigh as much as a puddlejumper!”

Ronon, slouched in the distressingly manual wheelchair that Rodney had managed to steal before their escape from Atlantis in a cloaked jumper, scowled and folded his arms over his chest and gritted his teeth against the pitying looks he kept getting cast in his direction from the people they were manoeuvring through – although whether the looks were because of his current physical weakness or the fact that Rodney was loudly and viciously berating him for being such a burden and general all around pain in the ass was up for debate. “Nobody made you come looking for me, McKay. You could have left me behind and come by yourself.”

“Never...leave...a...man....behind!” Rodney panted and nearly tipped the wheelchair over when he abruptly changed direction and beelined for a Starbucks. “Salvation!”

His eyes widening in alarm when Rodney nearly misjudged the doorway parameters and rammed him head first into the doorjamb, Ronon yelled furiously, “De-caff!” as Rodney abandoned him with a hefty shove two steps inside the door and staggered off to the counter to order. “I mean it, McKay, de-caff!”

“Heathen!” rejoined Rodney and promptly ordered the largest most caffeinated product they had without actually ingesting raw coffee beans. He jerked a thumb over his shoulder to indicate Ronon when the barista stared at him in polite horror and added, “Wheels will have chocolate with cream. Extra, extra.” He snapped his fingers lightening fast in the girl’s face when she continued to stare between him and Ronon with an appalled expression. “Come on, move it! Can’t you see I’m a man on the edge?”

Ronon, his diplomatic skills improved dramatically after fours years prolonged exposure to Rodney McKay, bared his teeth at the server. “He means thank you. Good service.”

“What? No I don’t.” Rodney looked baffled and annoyed and snapped his fingers again – his own diplomat skills so severely atrophied they were practically fossilised after becoming used to having three people with guns and an uncompromising stance on preventing harm coming to him following him around for the last half a decade. “Chop, chop. I demand sustenance!”

Ronon kept a wary eye on the other customers in the shop and absently dropped his hand to where his sidearm was strapped out of sight to his thigh under his heavy leather coat. He’d forgotten how Rodney appeared to the uninitiated – one gun might not be enough.

~*~*~*

“So,” said Rodney breezing into Ronon’s quarters the next day before he’d even managed to get himself past the first breathless moment of pain that accompanied him moving from a prone to a sitting position on his bed. “I think today we should get out of San Francisco and go somewhere else. I’ve recalibrated the sensors in the city and written a programme that will hide the jumper from the active lists and I think as long as we don’t do anything too ridiculous like go park on the White House lawn and sneak into the Oval Office we should avoid detection from orbit too. What do you say? Is there anywhere in particular you’d like to go?”

Ronon stared at him from where he lay on his pillows and growled, “My shower?”

“What? Oh!” Rodney nodded briskly and crossed to his side to slip an arm under Ronon’s fury rigid shoulders and, with a bolstering breath, raised him impersonally upright whilst casually ignoring the breathless curses spilling from his lips. “Good. I’m glad to see you’ve finally realised that bearing a striking physical resemblance to a yeti doesn’t mean you actually have to smell like one too.” He stepped back and eyed Ronon’s pale and sweating face with a calculating eye. “Somewhere new I think. How do you feel about art?”

Which was how Ronon found himself three hours later whizzing round the Louvre in the wheelchair from the day before which now did nought to fifty in thirty seconds because Rodney had appropriated some naquadriah cells from one of the labs and had spent a concentrated couple of hours making sure that he would never, ever have to push Ronon so much as an inch in the infernal contraption ever again.

Ronon wondered, as he watched Rodney loudly berate a security guard for imposing a speed limit on a helpless cripple, if he could persuade him to fit a small rocket launcher under the seat for their next excursion. He was definitely right – one gun was never going to be enough.

~*~*~*

The next day Ronon was prepared. He tried to remember the lessons that McKay had given all his team a few years back in the basics of altering the locking systems for Atlantis (“ _Because, seriously, what are the odds that we won’t be overrun by psychotic invaders at semi-regular intervals and I can’t be everywhere at once can I, Colonel? Now pay attention, you gun crazed mouth breathers because this may very well save your lives_.”)and implemented them diligently before retiring for the evening. He had lain scowling through the dark at his bedroom door for a long time before forcing himself upright again with more breathless cursing and crossing his room to heave and pull at one of his heavy loungers until it lay across the entrance as extra security.

He absolutely did not have to fight the urge to cry like a child when it felt like his whole torso was on fire when he was done and gulp down twice the recommended dose of meds he had been given to even contemplate getting himself back into bed after.

Which was, he told himself in the morning, the only reason why he slept straight through Rodney reconfiguring his door controls back to normal, storming into his room and going flying over the lounger before he noticed it blocking his path. Unfortunately he didn’t manage to stay unconscious for the thirty minute rant that followed or Rodney muscling him upright again and stripping his loose sleep shirt from his body to prod and poke him for signs that he’d seriously set his recovery back.

After that Ronon raised a figurative white flag and accepted his fate. Rodney was here to stay.

~*~*~*

Rodney, it turned out, was a criminal mastermind when it came to absconding from Atlantis on a regular basis in purloined alien spacecraft and with an honest to goodness alien along for the ride to boot. At first Ronon wasn’t sure if he should be concerned that the guy who basically kept Atlantis going and her citizens safe was so ruthless in circumventing the security systems he’d created for his own amusement, but after a few days of Rodney gleefully liberating them from the city and taking him all over his home planet he found he didn’t care. His body was taking a frustratingly long time to heal from his wounds – something that Keller explained wasn’t just due to the fact that he’d recently died but was also a culmination of all the other times he’d been injured in his long and painful life as a warrior and he had never let his body properly heal from – and he desperately needed the distraction that McKay brought him. Sheppard and Teyla dropped by every day to see him, but they were often tired and weighed down by their own concerns dealing with the IOA and the SGC to be allowed to take Atlantis back to Pegasus and their visits were mostly short and false as they smiled at him and tried not to make him worry that they were out there on their own amongst unknown peoples without him to watch their backs.

Rodney, on the other hand, seemed to live to raise his blood pressure and heart rate. If he wasn’t loudly and indignantly telling Ronon why all the natives of his home planet that kept trying to talk to him were utter morons and didn’t deserve to breathe the same air as him, he was complaining that people kept expecting him to take meetings and chair briefings on things that the most base lab rat on Atlantis could explain and, by the way, how did Ronon feel about snow? 

It turned out that the wheelchair now came with retractable skis.

~*~*~*

“Hey, you’re up!” Rodney looked delighted when he came barging into Ronon’s room to collect him for breakfast as had become their habit in the mornings. “And you don’t look like you’re going to be even a little bit sick. That’s great!”

Ronon grinned from where he was sprawled in his chair and pointed down at his feet. “Boots on and everything.” His grin widened when Rodney whistled admiringly and said, “Where we heading today?”

A brief shadow crossed Rodney’s face before he smiled widely at Ronon. “Anywhere you’d like. Did you look at those sites I suggested?”

“Yeah,” Ronon tilted his head to the side and narrowed his eyes thoughtfully at his friend. “Lot of places to choose from, they all look good.”

Rodney bounced a little on his toes and rubbed his hands together. “Well, the world is our oyster! Just say the word and we’ll head straight out after we’ve eaten.” He frowned when Ronon continued to look at him closely. “What? Do I have something on my face?”

Ronon huffed impatiently and then climbed slowly to his feet. “No.” He cocked his head and studied Rodney closely. “You look tired.”

Looking taken aback, Rodney scowled. “I do not!” He patted at his face anxiously. “Do I? Maybe it’s just the light in here. The Ancients didn’t really seem to understand the benefits of natural light sources. We should adjust the....what are you doing?” 

Ronon glowered warningly when Rodney tried to bat his hands away from closing on his shoulders and tugged the smaller man closer to the natural light deficient windows. He held him there and peered closely at his friend, noting for the first time the dark smudges under his eyes and the pasty pallor of his skin. He squinted suspiciously and turned him more fully into the light, mind kicking into gear as he thought of all the time Rodney had devoted to him over his recovery and then thought logically about the likelihood of the foremost expert on Ancient technology in two galaxies being allowed to cast off his responsibilities and spend his unexpected time on Earth indulging in nothing more than babysitting his injured teammate. “How much sleep are you getting?”

Guilt flashed through Rodney’s eyes briefly before he jutted out his chin belligerently and shrugged out from under Ronon’s hands. “I hardly think that’s any of your business.”

“How much, McKay?” Ronon grabbed Rodney’s arm when he made to turn away and barely stifled a gasp when his body protested the movement. Instantly Rodney’s expression melded from irritated to concerned.

“What? What’s wrong? Are you in pain?” Rodney grabbed Ronon’s arm in turn and then stepped into his side to try and hoist it over his shoulder and lead Ronon to the bed. “I knew you were rushing things! This is what comes of thinking with your adrenal glands all the time instead of your brain! Come and lie down this minute, you idiot, and I’ll go down to the mess hall and....”

“McKay!” Ronon dug in his heels and glowered warningly. “How much sleep are you getting?”

Rodney looked mutinous for a moment before sagging in defeat. “Enough.” He jumped slightly at Ronon’s impatient growl and said angrily, “Fine! Some, okay? I have to do something to earn my pay check and I’ve been pretty busy keeping you amused during the day and preventing you going into total melt down from sitting around on your ass and letting yourself actually heal for a change, so I’ve had to make up the time in other ways and, really, it’s not like I’m not used to this so there’s nothing to worry about and as soon as Sheppard gets us cleared to go home I can catch up then. I’m fine.” 

Ronon stared at him, shook his head and let himself be led to the bed, stating flatly, “We’re staying home today.”

Two hours later they were half a movie into their day of a marathon DVD watching session and Rodney was sacked out on the bed at Ronon’s side drooling on his pillow and boneless with exhaustion. Ronon looked down at him, fondly shook his head and turned up the volume on the film to drown out Rodney’s snoring as he popped a handful of M & M’s into his mouth.

~*~*~*

Once Ronon became aware of Rodney sacrificing his nights to catch up on the work he should have been doing when he had been gallivanting around the world amusing his teammate he made a concentrated effort to pull back at little and try to spend some time on his own again. That lasted precisely three days before Rodney’s wounded looks and hurt sighs made him feel like he’d just single handedly fed a village’s children to the wraith before he backed down and went back to allowing Rodney to browbeat him out of his room and away from his lonely healing process. He was more careful this time though and made sure that at least some time each day was spent in the labs to let Rodney return to making his minions lives miserable and allow him to at least keep, if not ahead, than at least abreast of the commitments that fell to him as chief science officer.

He found it was a lot easier to withstand the devastated looks and occasional desolate sobbing of the scientists under Rodney’s command when his teammate no longer looked quite so gray and pinched with exhaustion. Also, seeing Rodney reduce grown men to tears with nothing more than a laser pointer and a few caustic words just never stopped being funny.

All in all Ronon was feeling pretty good about life in general when he made his way back down to the labs one morning after being sent on a coffee and cookie run by Rodney and felt more than a little foolish when he realised that there had been another area of Rodney’s life he had been unintentionally monopolising. 

“Rodney,” Jennifer Keller’s voice sounded sharp and angry, quite unlike her usual soft ones when it floated out from Rodney’s small personal lab. “I need you to listen to me. I’ve barely seen you since we came back to Earth and whenever I do you’re distracted and distant and we need to talk about this before it becomes something we can’t get past.”  
Ronon frowned, hesitated for a moment and then, with a quick guilty look up and down the corridor to make sure he was alone, slipped into the alcove by Rodney’s door and settled into listen.

“I don’t know what you want me to say, Jennifer.” The weary note in Rodney’s voice had Ronon frowning sharply. Maybe he hadn’t been as successful as he thought in getting Rodney to cut back and take it easier on himself. “I have responsibilities here, we both do. I just can’t take off with you at a moment’s notice....”

“But you can do it for Ronon, is that it?” Jennifer’s voice cut in over Rodney’s, rising in pitch and in anger. “I thought it was sweet at first the way you were spending so much time with him and making sure he was okay, but you’re never apart now, Rodney. We haven’t had any time together alone in weeks because you’re always with him and you don’t even seem to care that we’re drifting further and further apart.”

“Jennifer,” Rodney sounded shocked and a little bewildered. “Of course I care, that...that was never my intention to make you feel that way and I’m sorry if I have.” Ronon’s sharp ears caught the sound of an unsteady breath being taken. “But Ronon...he saved my life and I couldn’t just leave him alone while he healed from that. He needed me.” Ronon sucked in his own breath at the unexpected punch of anger and hurt in his gut – he thought Rodney had focused so much of his attention on him because they were friends and now it seemed it was out of nothing more than guilt and obligation? His hands clenched sharply on the tray he carried and he only just stopped himself hurling it against the opposite wall because the only thing that would be more humiliating than finding out he was a burden of debt to Rodney was the two people in the lab discovering he had been eavesdropping on them like an errant child. He had just started to move away with as much stealth as he could when Rodney’s next words stopped him cold. “When I saw him lying on that floor, saw what he’d done for me, it was the worst moment of my life and I can assure you there’s been some really horrific ones over the past few years. I don’t care easily about people, or know how to really show it, but when I thought Ronon was gone....I thought...it was awful.”

Ronon’s eyes widened and his head snapped round to look at the lab door – he paused for another moment and then eased back into his hiding place quashing the shame that coiled round his heart.

Rodney’s voice sounded again, shaky and naked in a way that was completely alien to his normal bombastic nature. “When we got him back again it seemed like such a gift, an honest miracle, and...it’s not just for Ronon that I’m spending so much of my time with him, I need it too. I can’t quite believe that it’s real, that we were all given a second chance, and...I’m sorry, but I need it too.”

“Oh Rodney,” Jennifer’s voice softened. “Why didn’t you say anything? I didn’t think how hard it must have been for you.” Her voice dropped even lower and she said pleadingly, “But don’t you think you’re making it harder on yourself in the long run? The rumour is that Atlantis will be given clearance to return to Pegasus within the week and Ronon will be going back with everyone else. You have to see that being this fixated on him is going to make it so much more difficult for you when you stay here on Earth and they leave you behind. I know he’s your friend and that you care very deeply about him, but it’s time to start giving yourself some space now and to create your normal distance. This level of co-dependency isn’t healthy.” There was a very long pause and then Jennifer’s voice sounded again, sharp and angry once more. “Rodney? Did you hear me?”

“Yes,” sounding resigned and strangely broken, Rodney replied, “Yes, I heard you.” He sighed.”I think we both know that isn’t going to be a problem, Jennifer.”

This time it was Jennifer that sounded broken. “What do you mean? What are you saying?”

Ronon felt his skin break out in a cold sweat. Rodney hadn’t even so much as mentioned that he was considering staying behind on Earth when Atlantis left and he found that the thought of having two galaxies between them made the pit of his stomach fill with ice. He couldn’t imagine an Atlantis without his friend anymore and found that he didn’t even want to try. Rodney couldn’t leave, he couldn’t.

“I’m sorry,” Rodney sounded gentle but resolute when he finally broke the stricken silence in the lab. “I really and truly am, and if there was any other way then I would do it, but when Atlantis leaves for Pegasus then I’m going home with her. I’m not staying on Earth.”

Ronon heard Jennifer suck in a harsh breath. “What about us? You know I’m not returning as chief medical officer. I’ve already accepted a position at the SGC and I want to stay here. Rodney, I won’t go back there again.” Her voice sounding low and hard, Jennifer spat, “I won’t tie myself to a man that will only show up on leave once every couple of years, Rodney, I deserve more than that. You have to make a choice, you can’t have us both.”

With unintentional cruelty, but with his usual devastating honesty, Rodney replied, “There isn’t a choice to make, Jennifer. I’m sorry. I’m going back with Ronon.”

And that was when Ronon realised that they’d somehow become more than teammates and friends.

~*~*~*

It took Ronon just over a year, one broken near engagement, three abductions, one alien incursion of Atlantis (“ _See, I told you this would happen! I am always right!” “Shut up, McKay!”_ ) and a brief period of being marooned on a backwater planet with nothing to eat but root vegetables and some surprisingly tasty tree bark, but he eventually got Rodney to see they were more than just friends too.

Rodney, once he got over the shock, didn’t stop smiling for a month and then built Ronon his longed for rocket launcher on his wheelchair in celebration and that he still refused to give back to the infirmary.

John didn’t speak to either of them for a week and sulked whenever he saw Ronon tooling around the east pier on his down time until Rodney built him one of his very own for his birthday.

They got a great deal of use – official and otherwise.

~*~*~*

The End.


End file.
